Clark Gable hated anything that he felt was frivoulous about film making. He wanted to just show up, read his lines and go home. He didn’t like taking promotional stills or messing with endless wardrobe fittings. It was part of the job, but he didn’t have to like it. The costumes in Gone with the Wind were a sore spot with Clark. When he first showed up to film, despite endless fittings, his costumes didn’t fit right. He already disliked wearing period garb and his long hair was annoying to him as well. I think you can tell from these stills taken from wardrobe and Technicolor tests for that he…

Clark Gable didn’t want to play Rhett Butler–mainly because everyone else wanted him to. He often described how, even before he himself had read the book, people would call him “Rhett” and ask him when he was signing on for the film. He thought it was a great role, certainly, but the pressure was too great. In the end, it wasn’t really his decision, as he was traded like cattle to Selznick for MGM to have the distribution rights. Clark remained nonchalant about the film for years afterward. He had done his work, gotten his paycheck, that was the end of it to him. I’ve had people say to me at…

Last month, we posted Photoplay magazine’s sketch of Clark Gable as Rhett, from 1937. The following month, Photoplay upped the ante by publishing a sketch of Clark as Rhett with a woman that represented what they thought Scarlett should look like. Think Vivien Leigh fit the bill? Is This Scarlett? Again Vincentini scores–with this picture of Scarlett, as Photoplay conceived her. The prime requisite was, we told him, that Scarlett must be in Gable’s arms, for you see we still insist on Clark as Rhett. For the rest, she must have the fire of Paulette Goddard; the acting ability of Shearer; the voice of Alicia Rhett, Southern girl candidate, whose name…

Here is another article featured in the archive about Gone with the Wind: Here’s Rhett–You Asked For Him! from Modern Screen magazine, March 1940. It has some interesting quotes from Clark Gable about playing Rhett Butler: “One critic’s going to cause me trouble. I feel it in my bones. He said I ought to retire because I could never top my performance as Rhett. I like to be patted on the back as well as the next guy, but, boy, that pat has the makings of a knockout blow. I don’t want people getting the idea that, from here on, I’ll be slipping. God forbid. And I don’t want people…

Turns out Clark REALLY liked the sketch that Photoplay magazine did of him as Rhett Butler, that we posted last week. A few issues later, Ruth Waterbury, Photoplay‘s editor, wrote: …it was nothing to be photographed with Mr. Gable…though suffering with Mr. Gable is not actually the worst of all human agony… Clark had asked for that Vincentini portrait of himself as Rhett Butler that we ran in our October issue and though I was more than delighted to have him have it I had to see that PHOTOPLAY got something out of it too…so I asked that we get a shot of him receiving the drawing and they decided to…

One of the things I’ll be doing on “Gone with the Wednesdays” this year is revisiting the Gone with the Wind-themed articles in the archive. There are so many and I know that the archive is so hefty now that it is hard to find what you’re looking for sometimes. This article, “I Was Afraid of Rhett Butler!” appeared in Liberty magazine in February 1940 and is completely written by Clark Gable. It’s not very long so here it is in its entirety: Rhett Butler really put me on a spot, a hot one. Or rather Margaret Mitchell did when she created Rhett. I hope some day to have the privilege of…